Musings on Skill Challenges (or: Three Questions You Should Ask Before You Run One)

[Gunpowder]

Personally I like skill challenges. They help me structure the narrative but I think they should really be a "behind the curtains" thing, announcing skill challenge time usually heralds a mediocre experience.
I have had a mixed bag regarding skill challenges.

Good: The PCs were involved in an assassination attempt against the head of the occupying Thranish forces in Thaolist (planting explosives in the pyre the crazed cardinal was going to light). After the explosion, the challenge was get out without getting caught. First route they took was stealth. Both PCs failed (they were at separated at this point) and so both attracted the attention of some guards. PC1 successfully bluffed the guards to leave to attend other matters (the fire for instance) but one stayed and tried to recruit PC1 into helping. PC1 decided that killing him would be easier than another bluff, short combat and another successful stealth check later and he was in the clear, (3 success (PC1 killed the guard before he could raise an alarm so that counted)/1 fail).

PC2 couldn't shake his guards (bluff failed hard) so he had a harder fight(3v1) when he decided to fight and had to run like hell after it. So PC2 ended with 0 success(one of the guards was able to get the attention of others)/2 failures. So in the morning at the hideout, the PCs found out that PC2 was on wanted posters complete with a general description, "elf wearing such and such armed with a bow"(he had peppered three guards with arrows), and he had left a blood trail that lead the guards to the general area of the hideout. But PC1 succeeded his SC and there was only a brief mention that the elf had "possible accomplishes."

This was actually ran in 3.5 with just the preview WOTC put out of the skill challenges. The DM ran it as 3 success before 2 failures but didn't announce it. The concept of structuring the story as a series of skill checks helped the DM plan and improvise the action.

A different experience was a skill challenge involving a staff that was stuck in a planar rift which had to be closed to get the staff back (staff was macguffin the party was sent to get). What ended up happening was that the monk spammed arcana while the barbarian spammed endurance to give the monk a +2 to his check (the skill challenge required 6 success before 3 failures and arcana and nature were the only two skills that counted for success. Endurance was a minor skill that gave bonuses (the barbarian was helping brace the monk against the buffeting energies). The problems this one had were:

Scale. Very short and linear. I can understand wanting a couple arcana rolls to safely close a hole in reality but that's more like a complex skill check than skill challenge. It's hard for multiple PCs to participate, there's one very obvious right way to solve it and very little wiggle room for other solutions.

The skill challenge was a pass/fail. Pass: story goes on. Fail: staff is lost forever. Good luck getting your reward now. Which I think was addressed in one of those articles about S.C.'s. that skill challenges shouldn't stop the story but change how it goes. Instead of poofing, the staff could have come out but it would have brought something else with it and fixing the damage a loose earth elemental or demon could do would be the next plot hook.

Presentation. I think a major contributor to SC problems stems with its newness and some DMs are not sure how to describe it. It gets boring just announcing the numbers of skill checks just as it gets boring as announcing the numbers of to hit rolls. But people are more experienced spicing up combat with descriptions, those skills just need to be applied to SCs as well.

On the subject of scale:
I think one way to improve most SC is to widen the scale of them. A SC shouldn't be "talking with the king" but "gaining an audience with the king". In the audience chamber, diplomacy is pretty much the only skill worth using, and it makes the most amount of sense. The roll to get the king to help you should be the capstone skill check not the beginning.

But "gaining an audience" opens up the possibility of multiple skills. Flatter/threaten (bluff/intimidate) the bothersome bureaucrat to schedule you in to talk to the king or sneak in and slip in a foraged copy in the docket for the day that includes your appointment (a use of that copy ritual and stealth). A display of martial prowess on the practice fields and ability to hold your liquor in the bar (short sparing match or athletics and endurance) could befriend the captain of the guard and who could put in a good word for you.

 

[Starfox]

My main issue with sill challenges used to be that too many die rolls were involved, so I wrote my own rules, with fewer rolls.

I agree skill challenge must have a consequence for failure, but note that they should still not derail the adventure. The most typical skill challenge situation for me is when my PCs try to avoid a fight, usually trough either stealth or diplomacy. I like the skill challenge mechanism for this, as both encounters and skill challenges have the same two basic variables - level (of the critters, not the encounter level) and complexity (number of critters). This makes it easy for me to set up these situations as skill challenges. I can let my players initate these situations, I have rules to play by, and it does not take any extra preparation. And the obvious consequence of failure is that the encounter turns into a fight. Win!

Another thing I like is that PCs can compensate for each other's shortcomings in a skill challenge. In the sneak by an encounter" example, if someone has a lousy stealth, either the others can cover form him or he can contribute trough some other skill. But this can come back to bite you; skill challenges are essentially bluff matches between DM and players, where the player's try to convince the DM that they can use their best skill for everything.

As a mind game, I've been trying to think of a skill challenge that a dwarf fighter cannot use Endurance in, and find it very hard. Some possible uses:

• Social challenge: I drink them under the table
• Social challenge, distraction: I recite the tale of my 204 known ancestors.
• Stealth Challenge: I stand absolutely still, not moving at all or making any noise, as the others solve the problem.
• Any Challenge: I use Endurance not to boil over as a reaction to the others' foolish antics.

 

[roguerouge]

As a player of a skillful characters and a DM for a bard, I have to disagree with the idea that a skill challenge shouldn't be allowed to derail a game. If a failure in combat derails a game (BBEG's plan works, princess slaughtered, whatever), then clearly you owe it to the skillful PCs to let their abilities matter.

Moreover, derailments are often fun. That's where desperate creative thinking comes in. That's when plot twists come in. That's a great source for new adventures. And it's always a great place to find a newly hated antagonist.

(If neither skill challenges nor combat should derail your game, well, that's not my kind of game. Too literary.)

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

There is never a reason to use skill challenges.
Apart from the bad mechanics, its like Chrono22 said. Painting the House twice.

Skill Challenges are used to reward players for non-combat challenges and to give DMs a tool for building encounters that don't necessarily involve combat.

When the PCs have (want) to solve a problem with skill checks they will do it. There is no need to force them into a skill challenge which restricts what they can do in the game, effectively railroading them.

There has never been any evidence that players must be forced into a skill challenge. The 4E DMG does not state this. None of the adventures they've published that use skill challenges state this. And there is plenty of advice in the DMG and further articles that speak to the matter of not restricting the players actions. Can a DM force players to participate in a skill challenge? Just about as easily as they could force them to participate in a combat. A bad DM can railroad players with combat, with skill challenges, or completely on his own. The mechanic itself is not a railroad.

A skill challenge does not take powers into account, restrict the ways (skills) a players can approach the problem and artifically lengthen or shorten the problem solving by requiring X number of rolls.

You can use Utility powers during a skill challenge to boost your chances. And I do admit that most other powers aren't considered for their out of combat use. I've advocated that this is a symptom of the new system. It took time in the early days of D&D to find other uses for spells outside of combat. And those spells didn't change relatively through 3rd Edition. 4th Edition is a new game and will require some new thinking to use powers outside of combat. My advice: 1) allow powers to be used without the damage component; 2) really look at the fluff around the power and let the player describe his use of it in flavorful ways; 3) determine whether use of the power outside of combat really hurts the game; and 4) SAY YES! Bad DMs (or inexperienced DMs, which we all basically are in 4E) don't take powers into account, restrict the use of skills in imaginative ways and build skill challenge structures that are artificially long or short. But we're all learning. Skill Challenges are new to all of us.

DMs can of course say "If the PCs do something really clever they automatically succeed", but then you aren't running a skill challenge at all.

Yes you are. The problem you are encountering is that you are treating skill challenges as if they are hard, fast rules. There have been numerous example skill challenges in articles and adventures that try new things with the structure.

And most importantly, it doesn't really matter what the PCs actually do. All that counts is that their skill check beats the set DC to move a step closer to success. But what this skill check did actually accomplish is rather unimportant.

Not if you design the skill challenge to have important consequences for both success and failure.

So, after all the Hype for skill challenges (which is still ongoing), they are nothing more than a cheap railroad device without a real justified application in a role playing game. Even their result doesn't matter much if you folow the rules for them. Not to mention that the mechanics don't work if you use WotC rules.

Speak for yourself. My players enter a skill challenge only when they decide to accomplish something that warrants a complex set of actions that will have a meaningful outcome to both success and failure. They usually don't even realize that they've had a skill challenge because with practice the process feels very organic. They usually discover that they have when I mention they've hit a milestone and award them an action point. WotC has been developing these rules as the game progresses. It's a (relatively) new concept even if you count complex skill checks in late 3E. If you expect new game concepts to work perfectly from day 1 you will continue to be disappointed in any new game you pick up.

 

[Dausuul]

As a player of a skillful characters and a DM for a bard, I have to disagree with the idea that a skill challenge shouldn't be allowed to derail a game. If a failure in combat derails a game (BBEG's plan works, princess slaughtered, whatever), then clearly you owe it to the skillful PCs to let their abilities matter.

Moreover, derailments are often fun. That's where desperate creative thinking comes in. That's when plot twists come in. That's a great source for new adventures. And it's always a great place to find a newly hated antagonist.

(If neither skill challenges nor combat should derail your game, well, that's not my kind of game. Too literary.)

I think you're using the word "derailment" in a different way from the other posters. It's fine to have skill challenge failure be disruptive and force a radical change of plans. What you don't want is for skill challenge failure to be a brick wall that halts the adventure cold.

You brought up failure in combat, so let's use that as a parallel. If the PCs lose a battle and the result is "The BBEG's plan works, now you have to figure out how to overthrow an evil demigod and his infernal legions," that can make for a really interesting and exciting twist. But if the PCs lose a battle and the result is, "You're all eaten by grues" - not so much.

Likewise, if the PCs fail a skill challenge and the result is, "You're captured and thrown in prison, now you have to figure out how to escape or talk your way out," that can be exciting and fun (though prison scenarios are seldom popular with players).

If the PCs fail a skill challenge and the result is, "You can't find the dungeon," that's usually a bad thing; it tends to bring the game to a screeching halt. My experience is that the players will spend a while fumbling around, making halfhearted attempts to get around the obstacle. If you let those attempts succeed, then the skill challenge seems pointless. If you don't, then the players will run out of ideas and sit around staring at each other until you come up with a way to move things forward. Either way, it kills the energy at the gaming table.

What it boils down to is the need to plan for failure. When setting up any kind of puzzle or skill challenge, I always take some time to think about what happens if the PCs fail to solve the puzzle or botch the skill challenge. Failure has to have consequences, or the puzzle/challenge is meaningless. However, those consequences should produce a new and interesting situation, rather than leaving the PCs standing around going, "Uh... now what?"

 

[keterys]

I'm currently running a game that heavily uses skill challenges, though in a more freeform manner than the default DMG method. This is at odds to the previous home game I ran that barely had skill challenges at all - I wanted to try something different this time around.

It's been going extremely well so far, with much praise from the players and one of them being ecstatic that being a 'skill monkey bard' is useful.
The skill challenges have included:
* Gathering information about a crimelord they were tasked with dispatching
* Convincing slaves of the crime lord not to attack them and eventually rebel
* Escorting a rescued group of people to a shelter in the middle of riots and fire
* Saving a dying ranger and his mount
* Getting across the city in the middle of that riot/fire
* Putting out a fire on a house
* Tracking down someone who stole a body and sold it to a necromancer, intimidating/tricking that person, then getting to the necromancer's lair
* Dealing with traps in the middle of a fight
* Deanimating the body since it was partially reanimated

All but the 'getting through the riots' were completely optional - basically I don't say they're in a skill challenge nor treat it as one unless they make skill checks, and those checks advance the challenge or create complications. They mostly did all of them to a certain degree without me needing to suggest anything, and the investigation one they actually did a lot more than was 'required' just cause they got into it, though they had the option to use divination magic if they didn't want to use skills. The deanimating the body they skipped, though - they failed the first check and just chopped it up and put it away after that. Which is fine

That said, in another game where I'm playing, the DM doesn't really get skill challenges so mostly just says 'Everyone make Endurance checks. Okay, Athletics. Anyone got Nature? Okay, make one of those...' and then summarizes what happened. At which point I'd be fine skipping them entirely. I have had some DMs do some good ones and some bad ones. Some are screwed up by design, some are run poorly. So much variance. But oh well.

 

[Jhaelen]

That said, in another game where I'm playing, the DM doesn't really get skill challenges so mostly just says 'Everyone make Endurance checks. Okay, Athletics. Anyone got Nature? Okay, make one of those...' and then summarizes what happened.

Oh, dear.

If that's a typical example, it's no wonder so few people enjoy skill challenges.

 

[LostSoul]

Darren brings up some good things to avoid when running skill challenges.

*

Skill challenges are to skill checks what HP are to combat.

 

[the Jester]

As a player of a skillful characters and a DM for a bard, I have to disagree with the idea that a skill challenge shouldn't be allowed to derail a game. If a failure in combat derails a game (BBEG's plan works, princess slaughtered, whatever), then clearly you owe it to the skillful PCs to let their abilities matter.

I agree. I think skill challenges ought to have consequences for failure up to and including "the mission fails," "the party is lost forever in the Shadowfell," etc. But then, I also think that combat challenges ought to have consequences up to and including "TPK".

 

[Dausuul]

Y'know, I think the real problem with skill challenges is that they are today where combat was in 1E. They're a lot of fun, but only if you have a DM who groks the system and can breathe life into what are otherwise very crude, basic, boring mechanics.

Unfortunately, since combat in 4E is designed to be an interesting sub-game in itself, people expect skill challenges to be the same way.